Archbishop Hart
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Homilies Archbishop's Homilies 2008 First Catechesis for World Youth Day
| First Catechesis for World Youth Day |
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ADDRESS GIVEN BY ARCHBISHOP DENIS HART AT THE FIRST CATECHESIS FOR WORLD YOUTH DAY ON WEDNESDAY, 16TH JULY 2008 AT 9.30 A.M., AT SAINT AGATHA’S, PENNANT HILLS. “Called to live in the Holy Spirit” “If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:25) My dear young friends, Let us pause for a moment and imagine someone who is a very close friend of ours, how we long to be with them. We care if they are sick or well, we remember their special moments of birthdays. Above all we want to spend time with them and share experiences of life. We have come from near and far for World Youth Day. Pope Benedict has asked us especially to try and learn about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Father does this because he wants us to know that God is near to us and to our lives and that what we are and what we do is important to him. On the evening of the day of the resurrection Jesus appeared to his disciples, “he breathed on them and said to them, ‘receive the Holy Spirit’.” (John 20:22) With even greater power the Holy Spirit came on the apostles at Pentecost, “and suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting, tongues of fire divided among them and appeared and a tongue rested on each of them”. (Acts 2:2-3) At this meeting, just like our meeting with a special friend, a new relationship was forged between God and us. That is why I said that God is near to us, our lives are important to him and to so many others by what we can be and what we can become. On that first Pentecost Sunday the Holy Spirit renewed the apostles from within, filling them with a power that would give them courage to go out and boldly proclaim, ‘God has died and risen’. Freed from fear they began to speak openly with self-confidence. (Acts 2:29, Acts 4:13, Acts 4:29, Acts 4:31) These frightened fishermen had become courageous heralds of the Gospel. Even their enemies could not understand how uneducated laymen could show such courage and endure such difficulties, suffering and persecution with joy. Nothing could stop them. To those who tried to silence them, they replied, “We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:20) This is how the Church was born and how for two thousand years she has not ceased to preach the Good News. Going back to our analogy about a friend. We are very much influenced by the friends we have, the things we share with them. If they are good friends we will learn things and share noble ideals and hopes for the future. You young people are the hope of the world. You are people of action and because you have come here to Sydney I believe that you are people filled with love. So, who is the Holy Spirit? It is easy enough for us to understand God as Father and Jesus, the Son of God. We know that Jesus’ whole plan was to do what God the Father wanted of him. The Father gave him a mission after Adam and Eve had sinned to come and bring the world back to him and to give us a free opportunity to say ‘yes’ to Jesus and to develop a personal relationship with him. For the whole of our life we search to deepen that relationship with Jesus. It happens gradually at the hands of our parents. We learned about prayer and about God. On my first Communion day I came to know that Jesus was near to my life. Pope Benedict wrote that he wanted to keep a special nearness to Jesus on his journey and at the moment of receiving First Communion he knew that Jesus reached out to him. On Confirmation, although I did not fully understand it at the time, I knew that Jesus had a special call for me. So a personal relationship with Jesus through prayer, through following him and through being animated with the love that he showed us, is at the centre of our Christian life. For three years before his death Jesus led his followers around, taught them so much about life that he was known as the greatest teacher of the world. People even neglected having a meal so that they could listen to Jesus. He radiated God’s concern for us in a real, human way, while still retaining his Divinity. He knew he would not be with us the way he was with the twelve apostles, so he has left us his personal gift of himself in the Eucharist. That is why sharing in the Mass, being challenged by God’s word, and then offering our gifts of bread and wine, which become the Body and Blood of Jesus, are so important. But at the end of Mass we return to the world of everyday. As the Father loves Jesus and Jesus loves the Father and Jesus has undertaken his mission to save us, so the love of God is poured into our hearts by his Spirit, who is given us. The Holy Spirit comes to act with power in the Church because he is the seal of the love of God the Father in Jesus Christ. We know him, as we say in The Creed, as “the Lord, the Giver of life”. We know too that Jesus promised us, “I will give you the Holy Spirit. He will teach you all that is true and he will stay with us forever.” While Saint Paul said, “The love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit given us.” Here is a clue. God the Father and Jesus are both persons. They love each other so much and that love is poured out to us, as Saint Paul says, the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given us. Even that is hard to understand. Yet, we know that the word ‘spiritus’ means breath; we come to realise that as breath gives life to our body, enables us to sing out, barrack for our favourite football team or soccer team, to communicate with others, to run, to play games, to work, we see how important breath is for life. So vital also is the breath of God for the life of God in us. In Confirmation we are sealed with the Holy Spirit, who is with us and in us. The faith of the Church tells us that in Confirmation we receive the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord sent on the apostles at Pentecost. So too our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Just like breath animates our body, purifies our blood and helps us to live, so God the Holy Spirit is present among us in a way we cannot see, but in a way that we realise is just as real as the breath that exists in our body to give us life. Pope Benedict said in his Message for World Youth Day: “The Holy Spirit is the highest gift of God to humankind and therefore the supreme testimony of his love for us; a love that is expressed as the ‘yes’ to the life that God wills for each of us. This ‘yes’ finds its fullness in Jesus and in his victory over evil by means of the redemption. Let us never forget that the Gospel of Jesus because of the Spirit is not just a mere statement of fact, it is meant to be ‘Good News for the poor, release for captives, sight for the blind’. This is not only for the day of Pentecost, but it is for us at this time.” The Spirit is a powerful gift, a presence of God. We might substitute the word ‘church’ for ‘temple’. In the church we know that Mass is offered, Christ is present to be carried to the sick and for adoration, the beautiful Sacrament of Reconciliation is given; marriages and baptisms and sometimes ordinations take place. The church is a place of meeting with God and with prayer. When Saint Paul said, “Do you know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?” that same meeting with God comes within ourself when we seek to live the encounter that we have had with Jesus. Living by the Spirit, therefore, means living by Jesus, inspired by the love that the Holy Spirit gives us. Jesus declared that he was marked with the Father’s seal. (John 6:27) “Christians are also marked with a seal: it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has commissioned us; he has put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” (2 Cor 1:21-22) This seal of the Holy Spirit marks our total belonging to Christ, our enrolment in his service forever, as well as the promise of God’s protection in whatever trials may come our way. These words from the Catechism show us that our meeting with the Holy Spirit is not just a chance meeting with a casual acquaintance. Just as with our closest friend we want to stay close to them always, we are reminded also that God wants us personally to love and respond to Jesus, to know his invitation to ‘love one another as I have loved you’, ‘if you love me, keep my Commandments’ is also a challenge and a call. We are able to respond to this love by the mysterious presence of the Holy Spirit within us. Because we are a holy people, because we are searching after a personal relationship with Jesus, then we are invited to live by the Holy Spirit. Living by the Holy Spirit means acknowledging the reality of God’s presence in us through his Holy Spirit, striving to follow Jesus in the way of life that he has given. This is three-fold; faithfulness to the Commandments, openness to the Word of God and being nourished by the Scriptures. Firstly, faithfulness to the Commandments means that Jesus took the Commandments of God – I am the Lord your God, you shall not have strange gods before me, taken as the pattern for the Jewish people of old now transformed into the positive living of these Commandments through love and joy, allowing God the Holy Spirit to lead us along Jesus’ path. The Church’s sacramental life means that Baptism, which took place for us many years ago, is our way of life. By that fact we become countercultural and we are directed always towards God and towards the ultimate destiny of the world. God’s Word today challenges us freely to choose life rather than death, to be nourished by the constant encounters with Jesus, which are the seven Sacraments and to allow him to be Lord of our life. This will mean often difficult challenges, which may make us stand out against prevailing customs of the world. The reason for this is that we live according to Jesus’ programme of life. Despite adversity it leads us through every day, but always keeps in focus the life of eternity. The breath of the body, which gives us life and activity, must also be accompanied by the breath of God, the plan of the Maker for each one of us. Our challenge is to fall in love with Jesus, to be guided by his Spirit and to come through our journey following a life-giving promise, which will not fade or wear out, the power of Jesus, of the Sacraments he gives us and of the Word of God to make us strong and offer to the world the only possibility that it can know, of lasting happiness. That is why being guided by the Spirit is a guarantee of a personal relationship with Jesus and of a power for love, service and witness in which Jesus is inviting us to share. It is most important for us to remember the words of Matthew Henry: “It is enough that God is engaged to give believers strength equal to their trials and services; that under the influence of the Holy Spirit they may in one way or other be witnesses for Christ on earth while in heaven he manages their concerns with perfect wisdom, truth and love.” Again Henry says: “You and I are the place of the promise of the kingdom now. Yet ultimately the kingdom is God’s reign, God’s effort, God’s gift. We are not asked to usurp God, but to share his purpose and by his Spirit become his action in the world.” Part 2 For our life the Spirit gives a strong invitation. The Spirit is the strange personal presence of the living God himself; leading, guiding, warning, rebuking, grieving over our failings and celebrating our small steps towards true inheritance. (Bishop Tom Wright, The Holy Spirit in the Church, 29th April 2005) Today we are being invited to fall in love with Jesus and follow him and to live under the Spirit. This would always include a consideration of what Jesus wants us to do with our life. Cardinal Newman reminded us that God has created us to do him some special service. We are fortunate to know that God loves us as if we are the only person in the world. For that reason, as we come to know Jesus and find in him a strength for life and for whatever may be our call, it is important that we develop a regular life of prayer. Sunday Mass is our important public involvement with God. Each day we should open our hearts to God in prayer. He invites us to give of our love and our talents in building this world of love when he says, “love one another as I have loved you”. Jesus is a great teacher and leader. He used his power and care as God to draw people to follow him. He invites each one of us here. Then he instituted the Eucharist, the permanent reminder of his presence and went on to die but to rise again to show that God’s presence is active. It is important for each of us to consider whether God is inviting us to some particular work for him. It may be priesthood for the young men. It may be consecrated life for young men and women. It may be holy married life, devoted to God, devoted to family, devoted to children. It may be to single life and the use of one’s talents, whether in teaching or research. Whatever it may be God is inviting us to think seriously about his plan for us. Only in saying ‘yes’ to his plan will we find true and lasting happiness. Sometimes people comment that there are not as many consecrated people and priests in the world as there were forty years ago. Remember that God never ceases to give his invitation. He is looking for generous hearts, in love with Jesus Christ, filled with hope and ready to go on the journey that the Lord will plan. My own experience of forty-one years of priesthood, eleven years as a bishop, and eight years before that as a seminarian, is that I have had a breadth of experience, many challenges and a great happiness which has come and made all the greater because I know I have been doing those things which were God’s plan for me, never expected. I have never had an angel come from heaven and tap me on the shoulder. I have had good people who have reassured me of my abilities, others who have presented challenges and invitations from Jesus and I have had wonderful parents and a family that supported my desire to try and serve God and people in a special way. God has a special plan for each of you. Gerard Manly Hopkins, the Jesuit, said: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. Heaven and earth are already full of God’s glory. While the world has been darkened, for the morning to break again upon it the Holy Spirit must brood over the world. The Spirit given afresh on the day of Pentecost comes to invite you to share in making creation new, being guided by the Spirit and achieving great possibilities for love and for service.” Confirmation gives us special strength to witness to God and glorify him with our whole lives. By allowing us to be guided by the Spirit, each baptised person can bring our own contribution to the building up of the Church because of the gifts given by the Spirit for the common good. When the Spirit acts he brings his gifts for the soul, namely, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”. (Galatians 5:22) We are invited to proclaim the beauty and joy of the Gospel to our very secular societies. When Jesus invites us he invites us to love. When Jesus calls us he gives us the gifts of the Holy Spirit, he assures us of the power that we can achieve what he wants. My recommendation is, entrust yourself to Jesus. Do not be afraid of what he might ask. Trust him. He will supply the necessary help. Mary was with the apostles praying in the upper room, waiting for Pentecost. Their fear was replaced by joy when the Holy Spirit came. My dear friends, remember the Church has confidence in you. We pray that you may love and lead others to love Jesus more and more and that you may follow him faithfully. Do not be afraid of giving your life to him through priesthood and consecrated life. Whatever your chosen vocation may be, make God part of the decision, go forward trustfully and with hope, knowing that Jesus will send you the Holy Spirit, the greatest friend of all, who will never desert you, who will walk with you forever. May God bless you and give you peace and enable you to know how important are your gifts for God, for the Church, and for the world. + Denis J. Hart, Archbishop of Melbourne. |
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At every Mass we pray: ‘Protect us from all anxiety, as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of Our Saviour, Jesus Christ.’ In these tough times I want young people to see there is a purpose to life. The bad times do pass away. There is hope.
Jesus is the giver of hope. The Church says: ‘Look to Jesus. He has not abandoned us. He offers us a future.’
